The downfall of Big East basketball

The Big East has never been the best conference in basketball but it has in certain years been one of the deeper conferences in the entire country.

Additionally, it has had the national champion the past two years in UConn which has raised the conference’s standard.

However, this year just seems to be really different, and not in a good way. The Big East is completely up in the air with no team really able to stay consistent.

Marquette is currently the highest-ranked team in the Big East, but the Golden Eagles just lost to Iowa State and will likely fall from the No. 5 ranking.

There is a major issue of an elite team in the conference and Marquette might be the closest thing to it.

UConn, who was mentioned before as the back-to-back national champion, shouldn’t even be ranked right now.

The Huskies are being favored because of their name and are still No. 25 in the country despite going 0-3 in the Maui Invitational.

A team that was looking to go for a three-peat is now 6-3 on the season. For reference, UConn had three losses all of last season. That’s not a great look for Dan Hurley and company.

UConn and Marquette are the only two ranked teams in the entire conference. However, a surprise in the conference is DePaul. The Blue Demons have consistently been one of the worst teams in the entire nation.

However, this season they are 7-1. They didn’t even reach seven wins a season ago so this is already a step up.

But the problem is, if DePaul is one of the better teams in the Big East it’s probably not a great sign for the Big East as the Blue Demons are just in the beginning stages of the rebuild of the entire program.

Creighton is a team that has consistently been ranked over the past couple of years, but it seems that they are still figuring things out with Ryan Kalkbrenner being the lone guy to provide big-time scoring for the Blue Jays.

Another team with high expectations this season was St. John’s. The Red Storm are 6-2, which isn’t bad, but the expectation was for them to be a ranked squad and to be up there with the likes of Marquette and UConn.

There is definitely time for the Red Storm to fully put it together but they should have already been ranked and stayed ranked as a program on the rise.

Prior to UConn, the team that was consistently at the top, Villanova, has completely fallen off and looks like a team that will finish in the middle of what looks to be a bad Big East.

The Wildcats are 5-4 and struggle to defeat teams that they used to dominate. The Big East and college basketball are better when Villanova is really good and that is not the case this year.

Overall, the Big East has a massive problem with uncertainty about an elite team and it might be a major down year for the conference.

Andrew Deal is a second-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email asd5765@psu.edu.